[SOLVED] Strange sound problems (SoundBlaster Live! 5.1)

Hi all,
My system has been running flawlessly with Arch for years, however recently my sound started playing up. As in the ALSA wiki, here are the important pieces of information:
lspci output, you can see my sound card at the bottom:
[owen@oblong ~]$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb Host Bridge (rev a1)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce 250Gb PCI System Management (rev a1)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK8S USB Controller (rev a1)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK8S USB Controller (rev a1)
00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a2)
00:05.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK8S Ethernet Controller (rev a2)
00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK8S Parallel ATA Controller (v2.5) (rev a2)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce3 Serial ATA Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb AGP Host to PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb PCI-to-PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV40 [GeForce 6800 GT] (rev a1)
02:0b.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev ff)
02:0b.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! Game Port (rev ff)
lsmod output, you can see the appropriate modules loaded:
[owen@oblong ~]$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_seq_oss 31872 0
snd_seq_midi_event 8192 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 49968 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_pcm_oss 40192 0
snd_mixer_oss 16512 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_emu10k1 138144 0
snd_rawmidi 21504 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_ac97_codec 102308 1 snd_emu10k1
ac97_bus 3584 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm 70020 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_emu10k1,snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq_device 8204 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi
snd_timer 21384 3 snd_seq,snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 10120 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm
snd_util_mem 5376 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_hwdep 9092 1 snd_emu10k1
snd 50852 11 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_seq_device,snd_timer,snd_hwdep
soundcore 8160 1 snd
However, now is where things start to get strange. In days gone by I used to have, simply, a device node /dev/dsp which was the sound device. I'm pretty sure that my card supports hardware mixing which explains why I only had a single hardware device and not heaps of software ones. But now:
[owen@oblong ~]$ ls /dev/ | grep dsp
[owen@oblong ~]$
[owen@oblong ~]$ ls /dev/snd/
seq timer
Where the wiki says: If you have at least the devices controlC0 and pcmC0D0p or similar, then your sound modules have been detected and loaded properly.
And the result of some other commands:
[owen@oblong ~]$ sudo /etc/rc.d/alsa restart
Password:
:: Saving ALSA Levels [BUSY] /usr/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1502: No soundcards found...
[DONE]
:: Restoring ALSA Levels [BUSY] /usr/sbin/alsactl: load_state:1608: No soundcards found...
[FAIL]
Same for alsamixer:
[owen@oblong ~]$ alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory
Running alsaconf goes through all the normal steps, detects my card, sets it up etc, but when it tries to restart the alsa service (as above) the same result is had.
Any ideas? I'm totally stumped.
Last edited by Oblong_Cheese (2009-02-24 07:33:19)

Moved the soundcard to another PCI slot and it's working perfectly now. How annoying.

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